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Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

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Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#61

Post by tehwalrus »

The way the US talks about non-citizens has convinced me more and more of my (rather controversial) opinion that in order to have rule of law, we need one legal system for the whole world. I am skeptical of the idea of a world government, of course - it would have too much power, but I do think that governments need to be put on trial as frequently as citizens, in an international court system. I've blogged about this before[1], although I intend to rewrite much of what's on that old site since I don't think it's communicated very well.

I will (when time allows) be stopping my use of American cloud services one by one as a result of this scandal. Gmail, Dropbox, and so on. It will take a while for me to write/borrow my own implementations, and self host them, so that all my stuff works the same way (or similar enough). It was nice while it lasted, but I'm now going to have to start taking my skepticism of US law seriously, and avoid coming into contact with it where ever I can.

[1] http://politicomaniac.net/category/internationalism/

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#62

Post by 7952 »

nkoren wrote: post #45

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the…

The constitution was written for a world that lacked instant communication and had clearly defined jurisdictions that could be drawn on a map. It is time to extend the bill or rights to everyone.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#63

Post by arrrg »

vixen99 wrote: post #46
arrrg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are factually wrong. You, as a US citizen, are most certainly protected from my government by the German constitution. Not when it comes to all basic rights in the constitution (only Germans have freedom of movement, freedom of labor and freedom of association), but most are universal and apply to every person. The US constitution is out of date and simply wrong on this point. Human rights are universal and every…

Make clear what you mean by 'nationalism' before you use perjorative words like pest - as if your assertion is axiomatic.

You don’t have to agree with me. That was just an aside and certainly my personal opinion. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the main point I was making.

I do think, though, that nation states are a fundamentally bad model for governance and both too large and too small. I’m not sure what could replace them (and not a fan of pre-nation governance models), though something like the EU can provide some (tiny and obviously deeply flawed) hints at how to approach the “too small” problem, I’m not so sure what to do about the “too large” problem.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#65

Post by alephnil »

vidarh wrote: post #44
sampo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am afraid anon1385's text puts the 200-300 year old rise of nationalism in a wrong light. Before that nationalism, people were not global citizens, quite opposite: their circle of life was even smaller (in a geographic sense). Cities, city-states and small kingdoms. England alone was a patchwork of small quarreling kingdoms ( http://www.thehistoryofenglish.com/pics/heptarchy.gif ). So the rise of nationalism widene…

You're skipping about 1000 years of history there to make your point. By the time of the rise of nationalism, many parts of Europe had shifted back and forth in control between larger empires for hundreds of years, and it mostly was not a continent of tiny little city states and small kingdoms any longer. The era of the city states started fading quickly after the renaissance, and were in the first place mostly limit…

> You're skipping about 1000 years of history there to make your point.

This varied by area. Some nation states developed early (England, France, Spain, Portugal, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland), while other areas was dominated by city states much longer, like Italy and Germany that did not become a nation states before around 1870.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#66

Post by nsomaru »

obviouslygreen wrote: post #50

This outrage at American reactions is terribly hypocritical. Yes, people -- regardless of nationality -- should be upset when they realize their privacy is being grossly violated without cause, by any government. However, people seem to think Americans should be more concerned about other people's rights than their own, when the real problem is the violation of everyone's rights. Despite this, all anyone is really in…

Perhaps its because our rights (as foreigners) are not being recognised at all. One thing is to violate whilst recognising, the other is to just not recognise (in which case no violation exists).

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#67

Post by tekacs »

mahmud wrote: post #64

Ugh! I cringed reading that. We wear blue jeans, drink Coke & eat McDonalds. We favor American companies (hands down) when we make purchases Well, thanks, but as an American I'd rather if people didn't have this subservient attachment to the U.S.

A lot of American companies make high quality, often cheaper-than-domestic goods. Favouring them is hardly a matter of subservience.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#68

Post by eightyone »

PavlovsCat wrote: post #57
arrrg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are factually wrong. You, as a US citizen, are most certainly protected from my government by the German constitution. Not when it comes to all basic rights in the constitution (only Germans have freedom of movement, freedom of labor and freedom of association), but most are universal and apply to every person. The US constitution is out of date and simply wrong on this point. Human rights are universal and every…

Oh, and by the way, breaking moral rules is a hell of a good reason to raise outrage. I don’t understand why you seem to think that something being legal is reason to not be outraged. IMHO something I deem immoral being legal and happening is actually worse than it "just" happening. It's adding insult to injury, if you will, and of course it makes it much more likely to happen again, or even more and more.

I'm not sure exactly what your referencing, but if you are talking about all the stuff that's been going down in the U.S., Glenn Greenwald said at the Socialism Conference yesterday that a lot of what's going on isn't legal and has been ruled unconstitutional in the secret FISA court.

Link to video: http://youtu.be/Uulv4ve6RJ8

Skip to 45:00 and watch for a couple minutes if you're interested in hearing just that. Though if you have time I recommend watching the whole thing.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#69

Post by dfc »

7952 wrote: post #62
nkoren wrote: post #45

The Declaration of Independence states that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Gendered language aside, the idea of the founders was clearly that rights derive from one's innate humanity, and do not derive from government largess. This was the…

The constitution was written for a world that lacked instant communication and had clearly defined jurisdictions that could be drawn on a map. It is time to extend the bill or rights to everyone.

Just so we are clear the comment you are replying to is quoting the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution. These documents are very different.

Re: Why discussions on cyber snooping have been so painful for us

#70

Post by harryf »

tehwalrus wrote: post #61

The way the US talks about non-citizens has convinced me more and more of my (rather controversial) opinion that in order to have rule of law, we need one legal system for the whole world. I am skeptical of the idea of a world government, of course - it would have too much power, but I do think that governments need to be put on trial as frequently as citizens, in an international court system. I've blogged about thi…

A legal system as only as good as those who control it.

One way to define what the law is, is that it's the will of the strong imposed upon the weak. In the Middle Ages for example the "strong" were barons who imposed laws upon the peasants through their men-at-arms.

Today we have various competing legal systems fighting either for global control or defending their local "sovereignty". When we reach the point of one global legal system, we will have found a winner.

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